Why Fear of Flying?

by Captain Tom Bunn, M.S.W., C.S.W.

I'm a licensed therapist (MSW, CSW, LCSW) and an airline pilot, and work with people with fear of flying. I'm also in the Post Graduate Program at The Masterson Institute. Fear of flying, I'm sure, is strongly connected with personality disorder.

Vulnerability to fear of flying can stem from a lack of something we call "self-soothing," either because it did not fully develop between one and three, or because of later trauma. Between 1 and 3, the child starts to explore the world. When mishaps occur, the child rushes back to mom for soothing. If mom is consistently available to provide soothing, followed by encouragement to try again, both get built into the child's memory. Finally, the child can soothe himself or herself by recalling and imagining mom's actions. You can see toddlers "practicing" this by soothing their dolls.

In time, self-soothing becomes automatic and operates unconsciously to ward off anxiety. Things that might upset us get neutralized by the self-soothing so that many potential worries never even come to mind. If self-soothing is in short supply, one can be flooded with things to worry about.

Two things can go wrong: 1) good self-soothing was not built in; or 2) a good supply was built in but traumatic later events damaged it.

Good self-soothing is transportable and genuinely owned by the individual. Some moms supply loads of self-soothing but only through a psychological umbilical cord. When one ventures from home, the cord -- like a rubber band-- gets stretched and threatens to break, resulting in panic. Some families teach children that home is safe and the world outside is dangerous.

Even a good original supply of self-soothing can be damaged by trauma. The death of someone special can damage self-soothing in a general way so that anxiety can arise about virtually everything. Or, a bad flight or being mugged can damage self-soothing in a more limited way so that one avoids flying in similar conditions or certain street situations.

If self-soothing is not transportable, problems arise when going out into the world on our own. Leaving home separates us from our source soothing.

Anxiety comes in the teens and twenties as we venture from home. We handle the anxiety by maintaining the option -- if panic threatens -- to turn around and head toward home. Just knowing we have the option can prevent panic and anxiety. Anything that blocks this option is a threat. Fear of flying presents a dual problem. It blocks our option to -- if anxiety arises -- head home; the pilot is not going to respond if we change our mind. But it is worse than that. We are throwing away control horizontally and vertically. We are leaving home base horizontally and "mother earth" vertically.

Flying sometimes becomes a problem approaching marriage. When in love, we experience tender feelings, feelings we first had as a tiny, vulnerable child.

Falling in love can lead a person to feel what was associated with these feelings the first time: tiny and vulnerable. Flying is difficult when one feels tiny and vulnerable. We are taking off into a new and unknown phase of your life. Home -- like "home base" playing "hide and seek" -- may be the place we feel most secure. The farther we venture from home, the more the anxiety. Why? It takes more time to get back home where we feel secure. If home base goes out of sight, there can be panic. Why? Even if we turn around to return, we can't see home getting closer. On an airplane, our legs are useless for getting back home. We are "out of control" of an ability to find "home base." Getting married can feel "out of control" because it means giving another person major control over what happens. Also, we leave the security of home base. So, the "home base" and "losing control" issues are similar for getting married and for flying. Understanding this may help, but talking with a professional can help more.

Fear of flying often begins when one becomes a parent for the first time. You are responsible for a life other than your own. It may help to know that you and your child are safer on an airliner than sleeping at home at night. Though it may not feel that safe, you are actually much more protected in flight than on the ground. So, in terms of safety, you are doing your child and yourself a favor to fly rather than stay on the ground. In other cases, fear of flying starts connected with increased stress or connected with the death of someone we know or love.

We all have had situations where we trusted and were let down. It matters WHEN trust was betrayed. If it happened between 18 and 36 months, it causes normal development to stop or to be sidetracked. Then, we are left with the result of this development being altered or arrested for the remainder of our lives. And, because it happened so early, memories of it are not well-formed enough to be useful in therapy. There are things therapists can do, though. We can find an area where you are confident and strong and attach that confidence and security and strength to flying (or other fears). This is a very specialized therapy, but very effective for flying.

"Just put it out of your mind." It isn't that easy, but the following technique may help.

First, ask yourself what scenes are part of this anxiety. Go ahead and capture one of these scenes, such as (possibly) the airplane plunging down to crash. Then, use your imagination to create a small TV set. Imagine the set is half way across the room. Plant yourself in your chair. Really FEEL you body planted HERE, and see the TV set over there. Make sure this is only a small screen (5") black and white set - no color! Then put the scene that is bothering you on the small, black and white TV set; and all the time you are viewing the scene, be absolutely sure to keep the scene enclosed by the framework of the TV cabinet. If there is sound, remember these little sets have poor quality artificial sounding sound. If you want to, you can imagine the scene on the TV set is coming from a VCR and you have the remote control in your hand and can run the scene backwards and forwards, freeze-frame, or turn it off.

This is a very powerful tool for anticipatory anxiety. This is NOT, however, to be used during an actual flight, as what you need to do then is experience things just as they are without imagination, because imagination makes things worse than they are.

It's good to really understand that doing anything for the first time can cause anxiety. It may help to keep in mind that we, pilots, would not be doing this job unless it was safe. And if you wonder if it really is safe, consider that insurance companies are no fools, and they give us the same insurance rates as non-pilots. Be sure you board early and go up to meet the captain. Then you know somebody knows you and cares about you. They will also make more informative announcements during the flight.

Most people who fear flying have lots of ability to imagine things going wrong. Then, what you imagine causes physical tension, which then tends to make you think what you imagine is really taking place. So, to help stop this process, keep the visual part of your mind busy. Buy a number of magazines with splashy color pictures, and take them with you. Just flip through the pictures to keep the "visual" part of your mind too busy to make up imaginary disasters.

You can take a further step by keeping the "auditory" part of your mind busy. Bring along a "Walkman" with several tapes.

Take some control back for yourself. To start, be very aware that you have a CHOICE whether you fly or not, so that when you choose to fly, you have made that choice consciously and deliberately. Then, when you are on the airplane, you know you are there because YOU chose to - not as the victim of pressure by someone else. Then, before you board, go to the window of the boarding lounge and MEMORIZE VISUALLY what is outside the jetway and outside the airplane. Use your semi-photographic memory to record in detail what you see. Then, when walking through the jetway, you can remember what is outside; this helps reassure you that there IS an outside and the walls are not able to pressure you.

Go up to the cockpit as soon as you go onboard and meet the captain. This does many things. It helps you not feel alone and potentially abandoned to the vast unknowns of the sky where you have not the slightest control over your destiny, because you have developed a personal contact with the person who finds this area his/her element; and you will discover he/she is fully competent to operate in this vastness, day after day, year after year, with safety and confidence. The captain's confidence comes across in some wordless way, and it makes all the difference in the world to how you feel on the flight.

Blame it on me; tell them I made you promise to do it.

IN YOUR SEAT

Find out if there are any "eyeball" air outlets that you can control; turn them on. If not, place your hand near the air vents to prove to yourself that there IS air coming in. Stretch out your arms and examine PHYSICALLY how much space is yours. If you find yourself having breathing difficulty, hold your breath for one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three at the end of each exhalation and at the end of each inhalation.

ANTICIPATE THE "NOISE ABATEMENT" POWER AND CLIMB REDUCTION

On some take-offs, we reduce the power after reaching about one-thousand feet (roughly twenty-seconds after lift-off), and it can be frightening if you don't know what it's all about.

Imagine this: you get in an elevator on the ground floor, and press the button for the tenth floor. The door closes, and as the elevator starts to rise, you feel heavy. Then, as the elevator approaches the tenth floor, it has to slow down and stop. As it does, you feel "light-headed." In an elevator you know what the feeling is about. You are just slowing down your ascent. But note this: when you start down from the tenth floor, you get a feeling of "light- headedness." You get exactly the same feeling when slowing your rate of climb upward as when starting a descent downward. Both feel like falling.

The same thing happens in an airplane. After take-off, we reduce the power to reduce the noise, but that means the airplane can not climb as fast. When we pull back the power and slow our rate of climb, it feels the same as falling. Actually, we are still climbing - but not as fast. The problem is compounded by hearing the engines get quieter, which can make you believe they have failed.

The antidote is to expect to hear the engines change power about twenty- seconds after leaving the runway, and expect to get an "elevator feeling" like arriving at the tenth-floor. It is routine, but not used on every take-off. When you first get on the airplane, turn left and go up to the cockpit, tell the captain you are an anxious flier and ask if there will be a big power change for "noise abatement" on today's flight.

First you need to know that turbulence is a problem for people only because people think turbulence is a problem for the airplane. Actually the airplane couldn't be happier than when in turbulence. It just doesn't bother airplanes, only those of us who think it bothers airplanes.

Second, it can help to understand that turbulence is natural. The jet stream is caused by earth rotation, and zips across the U.S. up at 30,000 to 40,000 feet. If you fly in it, it is smooth. Also, if you are some distance horizontally or vertically from it, it is smooth. But when in its vicinity, friction between fast-moving jet stream sort of makes the nearby slow-moving air into ball bearings to roll across the sky on. Then, when you are flying in those rolling ball bearings of air, you get turbulence. When you go into one rolling up, the airplane goes up; then you come out the back side which is rolling down, and the plane goes down.

Try this: practice matching every down with an up. It is easy to not notice the "ups" because most of our childhood fears are about downward motion (falling) not upward motion.

For most people, landing is not so bad, because they feel the ordeal is almost over. But if landing does frighten you, consider this. Many years ago, landing in bad weather was somewhat risky, but no more. Now modern jetliners lock on to radio signals which automatically guide the plane right down to touchdown on the runway.

James Masterson, in what he calls the Personality Disorder Triad, points out the following sequence: self-activation leads to distress which leads to defense: measures to get rid of the feelings.

Flying is a form of self-activation which leads to ambivalence, uncertainty, separation-anxiety (not only from home, friends, and family but from "mother earth". Ordinarily, when experiencing uncomfortable or intolerable feelings, one does something about it either by taking control of the situation or by leaving. For example, when conversation involves an uncomfortable subject, one may try to take control of the situation by changing the subject. If that doesn't, we may leave.

We depend on these two main ways of dealing with feelings in day to day life on the ground, but on a airplane neither work. One must either endure the feelings until the flight is over, avoid flying altogether, or get help to increase ones ability to support the feelings. Flying strongly resonates with issues of trust, vulnerability, and abandonment. It does not help to regard these as "irrational." The Borderline's childhood provides ample reason to distrust, to feel intensely vulnerable and abandoned. Further, it is natural to avoid situations we believe we face risk and yet have no control. The primary complain from fearful fliers is feeling "out of control." This makes a lot of sense. Unable to control the situation and unable to leave, they are indeed out of control of their feelings. People who have stronger ego defenses simply do not have to deal consciously with such feelings. Defenses, in particular "self-soothing," automatically excludes from awareness the very feelings the Borderline is flooded with and which cannot be gotten ride of by the strategies which work on the ground: control and leaving (both forms of fight or flight).

If the Borderline is to fly more comfortably, three things must happen: 1. to gain a greater feeling of security through understanding how the airplane itself is a refuge (a safer place to be than sleeping at home in bed for the same amount of time), and 2. that though there is no physical way out of the airplane, none is needed because engineering and procedural ways out have been provided for every foreseeable problem, and 3. increased ego strength to support and automatically defend against unwanted feelings.

These are the main three things provided in the specialized program provided by SOAR.

Captain Tom Bunn, M.S.W., C.S.W.

http://www.fearofflying.com

http://www.flighthelp.com

SOAR Program information is at (800) 332-7359, or (914) 941-8148.

One-to-one Counseling information is at (877) 332-7359.

 

Permission by Captain Tom Bunn, M.S.W., C.S.W.